YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH (VBM)
*********************************************************

INTRODUCTION TO PARASHAT HASHAVUA

Parashat VaYetze

*****************************************************************
SHABBATON – MELAVE MALKA – SUNDAY MORNING SHIUR – TUESDAY EVENING LECTURE

It is with great pleasure that we invite our alumni to participate in the fifteenth annual Yeshivat Har Etzion SHABBATON with HaRav Aharon Lichtenstein. This year the Shabbaton will be held on this Shabbat, December 5 - 6, Shabbat Parashat Vayetze, in New Rochelle. We encourage everyone to participate in this Once-A-Year Event. For more info, CALL 212-732-GUSH (4874), write to etzion@att.net or see our website: http://www.haretzion.org/shabbaton2003.rtf

*****************************************************************

There will also be a MELAVEH MALKA, Motzaei Shabbat Vayetze, Saturday night December 6th, hosted by the Young Israel of Scarsdale, for Yeshivat Har Etzion's alumni as well as the entire Scarsdale/New Rochelle community. Following HaRav Lichtenstein's presentation on "The Post High School Year in Israel: Implications for the Student and Family," there will be a question and answer session. We hope to see you there!

*****************************************************************

Sunday morning, December 7th, HaRav Lichtenstein will be giving a shiur at Congregation Rinat Yisrael in Teaneck. The shiur will begin at 8:45 A.M. after the 8:00 Shacharit minyan. The topic of the shiur is "The Efficacy of Prayer." Rinat Yisrael is at 389 West Englewood Ave in Teaneck. Hope to see you there.

*****************************************************************

Tuesday evening, December 9th, HaRav Lichtenstein will be speaking at Congregation Ohab Zedek, 118 West 95th Street, NYC at 8:30 pm. The topic is "The Contemporary Conversion Crisis: Halakha and Public Policy." All are welcome to join.

*****************************************************************

Ya'acov's Dream
By Rav Michael Hattin

INTRODUCTION

"Ya'acov went forth from Be'er Sheva and traveled towards Charan."  So begins the account of our Parasha, with the story of Ya'acov's flight from Canaan.  Having secured in his youth the coveted birthright that his impetuous brother Esav willingly surrendered for a heaping bowl of pottage, having more recently boldly taken possession of the associated patriarchal blessings through the machinations of his doting mother Rivka, Ya'acov must now bear the brunt of his destiny.  Fearing for his life – incensed Esav biding his time until revenge will be his – Ya'acov escapes eastwards ostensibly in search of a wife from among his Mesopotamian cousins, the daughters of Lavan his maternal uncle.  

Alone and destitute, unsure of ever seeing his ailing and aged parents again, exiled far from the promised land that was to be his and his descendents forever, Ya'acov treads wearily onwards, his mind filled with a thousand uncertainties.  The sun sinks ever lower in the west, the gloomy shadows begin to lengthen, and then dusk falls and a chill is felt as the surrounding unfamiliar landscape takes on an ominous form.  The heavens begin to glimmer with a myriad of tiny points of light, the cloudy band of the Milky Way clearly visible across the expanse, but the tired traveler finds no comfort in their cold and detached remoteness.  Setting down his miserable pack, he prepares a protective barrier of stones to keep the night demons at bay and then settles down for a fitful night of sleep.  But in his slumber, Ya'acov is unexpectedly visited with soothing visions:

He dreamt, and behold a ladder stood on the ground but its top reached unto the heavens, and behold angels of the Lord ascended and descended upon it.  Behold, God stood by him and said: I am God, the Lord of Avraham your ancestor and the Lord of Yitzchak, and I will give to you and to your descendents the earth that you lie upon.  Your descendents shall be as numerous as the dust of the earth and you shall break forth to the west, to the east, to the north and to the south, and all of the families of the earth shall be blessed on your account.  Behold, I am with you and I shall guard over everywhere that you go, and I shall return you to this earth, for I will never abandon you until I have fulfilled all that I have spoken concerning you…(28:12-15).

In this concise but remarkably reassuring passage, God dispels all of Ya'acov's deepest existential dreads.  Without stating so explicitly, God nevertheless informs him in no uncertain terms that his brother will not harm him, that his wily uncle will not hurt him, and that he will merit to have descendents just as He vouchsafed to his grandfather and to his father.  Most importantly, God tells him that Canaan will be his and that his enforced exile from it will not continue indefinitely.  In fact, a careful reading of the verses indicates that Canaan stands at the center of God's assurances, for "the earth" and its synonyms is mentioned no less than five times.

While Ya'acov's dream is introduced by the ladder with its angels, it is not immediately clear what might be the significance of that background revelation, and the commentaries offer a plethora of possibilities.  We will examine two of them this week in an attempt to arrive at a more meaningful appreciation of this most enduring of Biblical images.

THE INTERPRETATION OF RASHI

Behold angels of the Lord ascended and descended upon it – first they ascended and then they descended.  The angels that accompanied him while he was in the land of Israel do not leave its confines, and so they ascended to heaven.  Thereafter, the angels associated with outside of Israel descended, in order to escort him…(commentary of Rashi, 28:12).

In his brief explanation, Rashi (11th century, France) addresses a number of issues.  First of all, he sees in the image of the ascending and descending angels not a continuous loop of celestial figures going up and down the ladder constantly, but rather a discrete number of ascending angels that presumably disappear into the cloud cover, to be then followed by a correspondingly discrete number of descending angels that reach the ladder's base and then alight.  For Rashi, the message is clear: Ya'acov is about to leave the protective and sanctified environs of Canaan as he embarks upon a journey that will take him far from its borders.  On the one hand, the dream's spectral images allude to this ominous reality, for life outside of Canaan, successful and fulfilled though it may be, is nevertheless an exile of the body from its native habitat and of the spirit from its life-giving Source.  Ya'acov leaves Canaan, but the defending angels who, at God's behest, have guarded him thus far, can only feebly wave farewell from the heavenly heights, for they cannot join him on his odyssey into the unknown.  But at the same time, the dream is a reassurance: though Ya'acov may be far from God's special land, he will not be far from His care or from His concern.  Therefore, the ascending angels of the land of Israel are promptly replaced by the descending angels of "Chutz la'aretz" (literally "outside of the land") who will watch over the patriarch during the course of his peregrinations.

Rashi finds tacit support for his explanation from two places in our Parasha that describe angelic interventions in unambiguous terms.  The first occurs after Ya'acov's falling out with his uncle Lavan who had grown to detest his nephew's success, but try as he might, could do him no harm.  After once again changing the terms concerning Ya'acov's wages from the flocks, Lavan attempts to prevent him from securing his rightful share entirely by removing all of the speckled and spotted goats and brown sheep that should have been Ya'acov's.  The patriarch responds by employing his own curious method of the whittled sticks in an attempt to influence the morphology of the flocks.  When he later describes this stratagem to his wives, he explicitly ascribes its inspiration to "an angel" that provided him with protection and relief: 

When the sheep bred, I lifted up my eyes in a dream and saw that the rams that propagated with the sheep were ringed, spotted and speckled.  An angel of the Lord said to me in the dream "Ya'acov!" and I said: "here I am."  He then said: "lift up your eyes and see that all of the goats that mate with the dams are ringed, speckled and spotted, FOR I HAVE SEEN ALL THAT LAVAN HAS DONE TO YOU.  I am the Lord of Beit El, where you anointed a pillar and made to Me a vow, now go forth from this land and return to the land of your birth!" (31:1-13).

An even more telling passage occurs at the very end of our Parasha that describes the return of Ya'acov towards Canaan after an absence of over twenty years.  There, after Ya'acov takes his fearful leave of Lavan for the last time, emerging unscathed from an encounter that could have been deadly, the patriarch encounters "angels of the Lord":

Ya'acov went on his way and angels of the Lord encountered him.  When Ya'acov saw then he exclaimed: "this is an encampment ("machaneh") of the Lord, and he therefore called that place Machanayim ("encampments") (32:2-3).

Here, there are actually two elements in the passage that, taken together, neatly close the account of his sojourn with Lavan with a reference to the Parasha's beginning.  The first of these, thematic in character, is of course the angels themselves, for they now reappear to guide the patriarch safely home just as they appeared, according to Rashi, to send the patriarch on his way at the outset.  The other, textual and literary, is the use of the term "encounter" (pegi'a), for here the angels encounter Ya'acov ("vayifgi'u") while at the opening of the Parasha, Ya'acov "encountered" ("vayifga") the place where he then had his nocturnal vision of reassurance.  Rashi remarks: 

The angels now encountering him (upon his return) refer to angels of the land of Israel, for they came to meet him in order to escort him home…the two encampments are that of "Chutz la'aretz" that accompanied him thus far, and the one of the land of Israel that now came out to greet him (commentary to 32:2-3).

For Rashi, then, the meaning of the ladder vision is straightforward.  Its ascending and descending angels are nothing more than the visual equivalent of God's verbal exclamations of encouragement and well-being.  Ya'acov's greatest fears were the fear of his own vulnerability, the dread of abandonment, and the phantom of eternal exile from Canaan.  God gently reassures the sleeping figure that He will look after him during the entire course of his journey until his eventual homecoming.  The angels, then, speak of that Divine protection that will envelope Ya'acov from the moment of his departure until his safe return.  He will never be beyond the compassionate gaze of the guardian angels who will watch over him everywhere that fate will take him.

THE EXPLANATION OF RABBI AVRAHAM IBN EZRA

Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra (12th century, Spain), in a markedly different formulation, sees in the vision of the ladder and its angels a powerful symbol that 

Nothing is hidden from God, and the events of the terrestrial plane are dependant upon the heavens.  It is as if the two are joined by a ladder.  Angels ascend in order to report matters after they have surveyed the earth, and other angels descend in order to fulfill God's mission, after the manner of a king and his servants…(commentary to 28:12).

For the Ibn Ezra, the angels of Ya'acov's vision are not personal guardians as Rashi would have it, nor are they expressions of Canaan's unique spiritual status, but rather they are symbols for the intrinsic connection between heaven and earth.  God not only created the "earth and its fullness, the world and those that dwell upon it" but is also aware of their actions and involved in their lives.  It is as if the ascending angels relay news of the what transpires on earth while the descending angels carry out God's will in shaping human destiny.  While a discussion of the meaning of angels is beyond the scope of this essay, suffice it to say that particularly for the Ibn Ezra they are not to be understood as pleasant cartoon-like figures with fluffy white wings but rather as spiritual beings, utterly reliant upon God and bereft of any independent force whatsoever.  Angels, really "messengers" in the Biblical Hebrew ("malakhim"), represent at least for the denizens of lowly earth, nothing more than the fulfillment of God's will as it is manifest in the material world.  As Ibn Ezra himself explains, in his comments to the rare and curious use of the related term "melakha" as a synonym for possessions and flocks (see, for instance Bereishit 33:14 and Shemot 22:7,10)

It appears to me that "melakha" refers to what a person may accomplish through the exercise of their power and authority.  Thus, wealth is also called "melakha"…FROM THIS GRAMMATICAL FORM IS DERIVED MALAKH (MESSENGER OR ANGEL) FOR THE MALAKH IS UNDER THE EXCLUSIVE AUTHORITY OF ITS DISPATCHER…(commentary to Bereishit 33:14).

As Ya'acov sleeps fitfully, alone and afraid in the palpable darkness that envelops him, God appears to him to assure him that He is aware and concerned.  The vision of the ladder and its heavenly hosts is meant to convey to Ya'acov that nothing is concealed from His purview and that His providence is perpetual.  Thus, while the specific textual reading of the Ibn Ezra differs substantially from that of Rashi, the consequential meaning is quite similar: Ya'acov has not and will not be abandoned to capricious fate.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF YA'ACOV'S VISION

Perhaps the true significance of Ya'acov's vision of the silent and ethereal angels can be appreciated against the backdrop of his father's, and especially his grandfather's life.  Both Yitzchak as well as Avraham seemed to have enjoyed an ongoing series of direct communications from God.  Almost without exception, every pivotal event in the life of Avraham, delineated in the Rabbinic literature as the so-called Ten Trials of Trust, was either preceded or else succeeded by an express Divine communication of reassurance and support.  Thus, on the eve of his departure towards the Promised Land "God said to him: Get thee out from thy land…" (Bereishit 12:1).  Upon his arrival, "God appeared to him and said: I will give this land to your descendents…(12:7).  After his uneasy separation from Lot "God said to him: 'lift up your eyes and see…for I will give to you all of this land…(13:14).  After the battle against the kings, "the word of God came to Avram in a vision…" (15:1), that was then followed by the Covenant Between the Pieces.  When God changed Avram's name and introduced the command of circumcision, "(He) appeared to him and said: I am Lord Almighty, walk before Me and be whole…" (17:1).  On the eve of Sodom's overthrow, "God said: 'shall I conceal from Avraham that which I intend to do?'" (18:17).  When Sarah makes the distressing demand that Avraham banish Hagar and Yishma'el, "the Lord said to Avraham: 'be not pained…'" (21:12).  And finally, at the Akeda, "(The Lord) said to him: 'Avraham,' and he answered 'here I am'…" (22:1).  Yitzchak as well, the events of whose life are described in much less detail than those of his father, hears the word of God on at least two occasions (26:2; 26:24).

But father Ya'acov, whose life was in many ways an ongoing series of trials, frustrations, and tragedies, seldom hears the direct word of God.  During the entire course of his painful twenty-year sojourn with crafty Lavan, God is silent.  As Ya'acov fearfully prepares to confront brother Esav and his ancient animosities, God is silent.  When Dinah is taken and raped after the family finally arrives in Canaan, God is silent.  Only after they have returned to Beit El and Ya'acov has fulfilled his vow, does God appear and provide a message of encouragement, but that moment of repose is quickly followed by the untimely death of Rachel in childbirth and then the ignominy of Reuven's infidelity!  During the interminable course of Yosef's ensuing twenty-two year disappearance, God is again silent.  Only on the eve of the descent to Egypt does He appear to the aged and broken patriarch in a night vision of hope and sanguinity, even as the exile and oppression of his descendents is about to unfold: 

The Lord said to Yisrael in visions of the night: "Ya'acov, Ya'acov", and he said: "here I am."  He said: "I am Lord, the Lord of your father.  Do not be afraid of descending to Egypt, for there I will make you a great nation.  I will descend with you to Egypt and I will bring you forth…(Bereishit 46:2-4). 

Now it is the case that as Ya'acov prepared to leave Lavan, "an angel" reassured him (31:10-11), and as he prepared for the encounter with Esav, "a man" strove with him until daybreak and then blessed him in a foreshadow of triumph (32:25-31), but these were hardly the sorts of direct Divine exchanges that took place between the Deity and Avraham or Yitzchak.  In other words, we must therefore uncomfortably conclude that the vision of the angels, whether according to Rashi or else the Ibn Ezra, is not only or even primarily a reassurance to the solitary sleeping figure but rather a challenge of his trust.  And like father Ya'acov, seldom (if ever) does God speak to us in an unambiguous and clear communication.  Even as the events of our own lives are played out, some of them joyous moments, others difficult and painful ordeals, God's perceived silence may be mistaken for absence or indifference, but the lesson of Ya'acov's angels teaches us otherwise.  Heaven and earth are connected, our fates are of supreme concern, and God does indeed intervene in a fashion that is neither obvious nor overt.  It is instructive to note that never, during the entire course of his long and difficult life, does Ya'acov fail to trust in God or in His providence.  Ya'acov's unique contribution to our own spiritual legacy is thus ably summed up by his nocturnal vision of "a ladder that stood on the ground while its top reached unto the heavens, and behold angels of the Lord ascended and descended upon it…"

Shabbat Shalom